gaityr

MEET ME IN ST LOUIS is a quaint, lush piece of work from musical director extraordinaire Vincente Minelli. Starring the lovely, young Judy Garland as Esther Smith, the movie traces the story of the Smiths as the two girls of the family try to land marriageable prospects, even as their father's (Leon Ames) decision to move the family out of the picturesque St Louis to New York threatens to tear their dreams asunder.

The movie isn't particularly demanding or especially thought-provoking. In fact, it's little more than a slight family drama dressed up with some songs (albeit lovely ones, including the title song, The Boy Next Door, The Trolley Song, and breakout classic Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas). Garland is fresh and pretty in her role as Esther, and displays some of her surprisingly sharp comedic talent in a scene where, due to a misunderstanding, she (quite physically!) berates her beau John Truett (Tom Drake). At this point in her life and career, Garland's voice is unparalleled, and it's certainly put to good use in this movie. There's little doubt that this movie was plotted around her talents; she is without a doubt the star, although little Margaret O'Brien puts in a valiant, adorable performance as her mischievous sister Tootie, and Mary Astor and Ames do a good job of depicting a relationship that's, in the end, still founded on love. (Their duet 'You And I' is unusually affecting, given that all the other songs in the film are really just for Garland to show her stuff.) You can't be much blamed for not remembering a whole lot of this movie's plot when you're done watching it though. It's so slight as to be a little unremarkable in that respect. The movie, while not objectionable in any way, is certainly one of the lesser entries in the canons of both Minelli and Garland.

ALICE ADAMS, played by the late, great Katharine Hepburn, is quintessentially the beautiful, ambitious small-town girl put upon by circumstance. She wants desperately to be accepted, to be something other than just a poor "nobody"... to hide the fact that she doesn't come from 'money' and 'background'. This is painfully obvious in the first few scenes, when Alice steals out of the nickel-and-dime store but pauses meaningfully before the classy Vogue shopfront: trying to fool the world and possibly herself into thinking that that was where she was shopping all afternoon. She plans and preens for the high-society Palmer party, even though she has to wear her two-year-old dress, pick flowers for her own corsage, and go with her brother Walter (Frank Albertson) as her date. As everyone at the party ignores Alice, save another social reject Frank Dowling (bit-player Grady Sutton), she spots and is attracted to the rich, handsome Arthur Russell (Fred MacMurray, in a woefully underwritten role). Of course, Mr. Russell is meant to marry party hostess Mildred Palmer. This doesn't last long though--he quickly makes clear his attraction to the magnetic, gracefully awkward Alice, and begins to court her with serious intent. But Alice, in her eagerness to hide her social status, papers over their growing love with lies, which leads to a disastrous dinner party at the Adams abode... even as her family slowly disintegrates around them, partly due to Alice's father Virgil (Fred Stone) wanting to earn more money for his daughter.

The film is generally okay--that's the best word for it. Not great, not even really *good*, but just... okay. It's interesting, and hints at something better than it is. But ultimately, it's a social drama that comes off a bit stilted, with very few fully-fledged characters. The key role of Arthur Russell is remarkably free of a personality, and it's even hard to really put a finger on what Arthur finds so enchanting about Alice... aside from her being fortuitously Katharine Hepburn's identical twin. Oh, Alice is an interesting character, certainly. But so much of her being is concentrated on her social ambitions that it leaves you wondering what Arthur sees in her since these are the very things she hides from him when they are together. Alice's brother and father fare better, but even towards the end, Walter becomes little more than a plot device in an ending that appears to want to serve as a muddled sort of come-uppance for Alice. Sutton as bumbling gentleman and his sister's dance partner is actually a stand-out in his... what? Five minutes of screen time? Intriguing though the message of the film may be (social class does not matter and attempts to rise above it will only keep you from your true self and happiness), the blandness of the characters keeps one from really developing sympathy for the characters.

As for Alice, the film almost seems designed to have the audience keep her at arm's length. When she recognises that she is the one who will drive Arthur away, not because of what he has heard about her but because she cannot bear to confront her own reality head on, she keeps pressing on. The one truly brilliant scene in the film is that of the disastrous dinner party--this is possibly the first film I've seen where the atmosphere is one of muffled horror, both on the part of the participants as well as the audience. As Alice flounders through the dinner, chatting constantly, gaily, desperately, I found myself just wanting her to please, please keep quiet. To stop making things worse. It was very effectively staged, and a wry, clever commentary on Alice's inability to just relax and be herself. But by the end of the film, when Alice realises her foolishness and finally lets her guard down, there just isn't time to muster much sympathy for her character. It doesn't help that her suitor is so terminally boring that the love story is charming at best, but certainly does not come anywhere near to the unadulterated magic of the best classic film couples.

However--and this is a pretty darn big however--although this is probably not one of Hepburn's better 1930s films (she starred in a whole run of those, including LITTLE WOMEN, STAGE DOOR, HOLIDAY and BRINGING UP BABY), this is without a doubt one of the best of her 1930s performances. Never was there a lovelier, more quietly desperate wallflower than Hepburn's Alice. Hepburn is not squarely in her prime here--not yet. For that, I point you to her unparalleled, radiant turn in THE PHILADELPHIA STORY. But in ALICE ADAMS, she is all fresh, awkward beauty. Her performance gives a strong hint of what she will be well capable of in the future--an almost intuitive ability to harness those 'mannerisms' of hers, as her critics call them, to serve the performance and flesh out her character... but also to shed them in an instant and truly, genuinely surprise her audience with beautiful understatement and a remarkable lack of histrionics in her performance. (This would only be refined in her future roles with Spencer Tracy.) As Alice floats through the Palmer party, pretending she is in demand and only waiting for her date, or as she chats with a desperate light in her eyes to Arthur at the Adams' dinner party, Hepburn suffuses the role with the kind of quiet, frantic desire which is simply perfect for her character. It is Hepburn that gives ALICE ADAMS the spark of life it needs to keep from being a mediocre, even bad, film. Her performance is the cornerstone and, quite frankly, the most interesting part of the film.

7.5, largely on the basis of Hepburn's performance which gives this film the extra edge it needs.

So you've got two of the most famous, most classic film stars of ANY generation in one film--that would, of course, be Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn. You've also got the whole Gershwin songbook to pick from for your soundtrack. You even have the studio agreeing to ferry the whole company to Paris for location filming. Sounds promising?

Yeah, it did to me too. Quite frankly, it's the script and basic plotline that let the rest of the enterprise down. Hepburn plays Jo Stockton, an intellectual (and we know this because of her less-than-gleaming pageboy cut and the drab shapeless grey potato sack she wears... and still looks fabulous in) who works in a bookstore. She tries very hard to get her shelves back in shape after Dick Avery (Astaire) and his entourage from Quality magazine (including a manic Kay Thompson as lady-in-charge Maggie Prescott) descend upon the store for a photoshoot... only for Dick to leave her floundering and singing "How Long Has This Been Going On?" when he surprises her with a kiss. Still, she clings to her empathicalism ideals and agrees to go to Paris for a Quality fashion shoot so that she can meet the father of empathicalism (her philosophy of choice, of course), Professor Emile Flostre (Michel Auclair). Dick's charming of Jo continues through the fashion shoot, and to the tune of "He Loves And She Loves", he finally realises he loves her back. But as in all romantic comedies, the course of true love never did run smooth, and Jo gets upset when Dick tries to warn her off Professor Flostre ("He's about as interested in your intellect as I am"). The inevitable misunderstanding happens between two lovers when Jo refuses to turn up for the final unveiling, and Dick is set to take a plane back to New York alone.

It's all pretty run-of-the-mill, sentimental pablum, with an attempt to pass poor writing off as profound themes. I never knew Hepburn was a dancer, and she acquits herself rather well in her solo prance through the (literally) underground French cafe. But really--the only word for moments like this is 'surreal'. The impetus for the dance doesn't ring true; the dance itself is technically accomplished but bewilderingly weird... and well, Hepburn may entrance her audience when she's acting, but she's not a magnetic dancer (not the way, say, Cyd Charisse is). That apart, Thompson and Astaire also suffer in their seriously eccentric duet to "Clap Yo' Hands". Partly because Thompson's presence in the film is, to me, utterly mysterious. Of course she's *meant* to be the typical musical sidekick (see O'Connor, Donald, SINGIN' IN THE RAIN), but she falls far short of the mark. A successful sidekick would light the screen up during his or her solo--her "Think Pink" was, frankly, frightening, and she just wasn't very good in the rest of her numbers. (Even her duet with Hepburn, "How To Be Lovely", was running on empty when it started.) As for Astaire--what a shame. His talent was put to waste in this film, even though he still looks pretty spry and his sense of rhythm is as impeccable as ever. But in "Clap Yo' Hands", his dancing passes only for mugging (and sadly, not even intentionally so). Another one for the 'surreal' label--it's evidently TRYING to be witty and avant-garde. And failing miserably. Astaire's own solo number is perfectly executed as usual, and he pulls off his coat-swirling with great style, but one still feels as if some spark in him is still missing. Of all the good material the film had to work with, it's really a shame that it never used any of its three principals well.

That's not to say the film was beyond all hope: It's hard to come out of such a poorly-scripted and thought-out film on your feet, but it's also hard for Astaire and Hepburn to be truly horrifyingly bad... so they're just bland. They do go some way in lending their trademark class to the film, for example in the extremely poorly-lit darkroom courtship dance. It *seems* very good, from what little I can make out through all the murky black and red... it's a scene just crying out for digital re-enhancement so that we can actually see what's going on. But it's still quite nicely-executed. There's also a flash of the magic that this film could have had the two times Jo and Dick walk together behind the little Parisian church, with her in all her wedding finery. When he realises that she's fallen for him, for real, he sweetly serenades her with the song "He Loves And She Loves", and the raft across the river is a very sweet, pretty touch.

Given the pedigree of this film, I really had been expecting a lot more than I actually got. It's not horrible, but nor is it fantastic. Probably one to watch if you're a fan of Astaire's or Hepburn's, but I doubt I'll be pulling this one out for a re-viewing any time soon. 6.5/10